


The ReCap

by jeta



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU during the five years in between, But also not entirely Endgame inconsistent, Coffee, Everyone Has Issues, Gen, Guilt everywhere, Guilt here, Guilt there, Not Endgame consistent, Repairing the Team, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Tony Stark Has Issues, Uneaten Cupcakes, angsty, just a few swear words, talking it out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2019-08-04 08:28:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16343360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeta/pseuds/jeta
Summary: Four days after the end of Infinity War, Steve tells the four remaining Original Avengers what really happened in Siberia.





	1. Chapter 1

 

“Tony stopped first,” said Steve, suddenly recollecting the moment with perfect clarity. “He had a presumably lethal shot on Bucky, and he didn’t take it.”

He set down his mug, feeling sick to his stomach. Not from the acidity of the coffee, either; he had yet to take more than a sip or two. Nobody else had made much of a dent in their drinks, though, either. Thor had taken the liberty of buying a whole plate full of muffins and cupcakes; they sat in the center of the round table, clumped together, untouched.

It had been four days since Wakanda, and the end of the world. Roads had emptied out, then choked full. Airlines had basically gone dead, after so many commercial flights had cratered to the earth all in the space of two minutes. Schools were closed. Banks were closed. Life itself was closed. But the Avengers (what was left of them) had somehow all made it back to New York City, where some hundred or so coffee shops were still open and operating. That was New York for you. 

Thor had picked one down on 6th and Bleecker. Steve had wanted to crawl back into bed, but Thor could be very insistent when he wanted to be. For reasons unknown to everyone else, he had demanded they meet for coffee and cupcakes that morning. They, the Original Team. The Six of them, minus one.

And then Thor had asked someone to explain what he and Bruce had missed since they had fought Ultron, and since Nat and Clint were stony-faced and tight-lipped, Steve had taken charge... and then Bruce had demanded detail after detail after detail, and so that was how, somehow, the whole story of Siberia had started to spill out.

“When, exactly, during the fight did this happen?” asked Bruce, setting his espresso cup back in its saucer, his brow mushed down into a careful frown.

“Immediately after he blew Bucky’s arm off,” said Steve, in a way that was just barely short of spitting the words. He started another phrase, but got stuck in another unnameable emotion somewhere between rage and disgust. Probably an emotion that Bruce knew a name for, but Steve sure as hell didn’t. “Which in hindsight, tells me that the rest of the fight was just momentum and adrenaline, for him.”

Everyone was silent. They were entitled to judge him, Steve reminded himself. They had a right to judge his actions, and Tony’s, and decide for themselves who had been right and wrong. Natasha had already heard most of this; she was staring into her latte, spinning the milk aimlessly, but her ostensibly vacant expression said she was thinking hard. Clint had an impassive expression like he didn’t care one way or the other, and just wanted the conversation to end. Thor was quiet. 

And Bruce was on Tony’s side.

“Well, to be fair, after what he had just seen on the video—”

“No, not momentum against Bucky,” Steve clarified firmly, interrupting Bruce’s point. “Momentum directed against  _ me _ . Or against Captain America, maybe, if that makes it easier to picture. Bucky stepped out, and I stepped in, and we just…” ( _... nearly murdered each other—  _ ). “Look, I don’t know how long the two of us might have fought like that before we… But trust me when I say, it took him exactly where… where he had been wanting the fight go.”

“He didn’t want to kill you, Steve,” Bruce argued. “I’m sure of it. I’m sure he didn’t even plan to hurt you. Tony’s a good man, and a good friend.”

Steve found it difficult not to flinch, but he resisted the impulse. “You weren’t there,” he stated, when he had full composure.

“I don’t have to have been there. I know you both; you must have just gotten overheated, and given everything that happened leading up—”

“Well, no, it wasn’t just — he shouldn’t have —” Steve interrupted Bruce and himself, brokenly losing the thread of the point he had to make in the middle of his sentence. His composure must have been a lot more fragile than he’d realized. His frustration grew with each aborted attempt to explain. “I should have just — what I’m trying to saying is —”

“Captain America should have convinced an irate Iron Man of his own better nature using words, not fists, but you couldn’t, because your friend’s life was at stake,” Bruce said summarily. “I get it, Steve. I really get it. Steve Rogers messed up, and so did Tony Stark, and you got hurt, and he got hurt. But what are you gonna do about it  _ now _ ? You can’t take it back even if you’d like to.”

“I’d like to,” he said fervently, and this time he could bear it when they  _ all _ looked up at him with hope in their faces;  _ everyone  _ wanted that to happen. Steve suddenly hated the fact that he had let them down in the first place. Not for the first time, he caught himself blaming Tony for the broken bones in the body of his team —  _ their team  _ — which was unfair; they shared the blame, and though Steve still believed he had been right about the Accords, in principle, he would of course,  _ of course _ like to have the chance to apologize to Tony, because that would mean that Tony was alive, and well, and home where he belonged. Not for the first time, Steve’s glance flickered to the empty chair at the next table over, the likeliest candidate to be dragged over to their table if their sixth teammate were only  _ present. _ “But I don’t think…”

“You don’t think you can —”

“No, I’m saying,  _ I don’t think I’d do anything different _ .” 

Bruce’s face was all honest indignation. Steve locked his eyes on Banner’s, ignoring the others, and projecting all the resolution he could muster, and then — then the facade dropped away, and was replaced with the disgust he had felt for the actions he’d had to take that day. The disgust at his own  _ failure _ , which he could still feel even now, saturating his emptiness, staining his whole post-Siberia life with a bitter, acrid taste, one that had multiplied itself several  _ thousand  _ times over since last Friday, when the world had ended. He swallowed down bile and returned to telling the story. They deserved to know the facts. 

Even the very ugliest ones.

“There was this moment, when Tony stopped fighting for a half second,” he said softly. “I kept us going. And I… I am afraid I’d do it again. I don’t know what came over me, but I remember that moment, and I remember thinking  _ now we can stop, now we can talk _ , and I… I ignored…”

Steve just trailed off.

Bruce was the only one who would meet his eyes, but that didn’t last long. An unnerving quiet came over the group.

So was the other person at his end of the table, who Steve had very nearly forgotten was there. Thor’s fingers were steepled together. He’d been silent all this time, but when Steve looked over, Thor met his stare with one very clear-eye and a level expression. He cleared his throat, and then said the last thing Steve would have expected: 

“I know what it’s like to  _ need _ to kill someone you care about, Steve. It’s a madness that grabs hold of you. You get emotionally overheated. You don’t have time for talking things out, which, you know, with us Avengers, typically only amounts to quaint witticisms and light-hearted jokes." (He paused slightly to demonstrate, pantomiming a grouchy little man with one hand, and a chorus of ha-ha-ha-ing laughter with the other, which made Clint break his surly streak and grin). "Camaraderie helps us, you know. Usually. But if you had talked to each other before events turned so dark and painful, it would have spared you both a lot of pain, and it might have spared us a terrible loss. You need to find a way to talk this out somehow, even if Stark is dead. Tell him what you told us, and why you did what you did. Or else you’ll live in regret over it for the rest of your life.”

Steve drew back like he’d been slapped. So did Bruce, although it seemed he managed to recover his equilibrium a little faster. He clapped a hand on Thor's shoulder.

“Thor, that was very insightful,” complimented Nat, the first time she’d spoken all morning.

“Thank you,” he beamed at her.

“Very uncharacteristically insightful,” muttered Clint.

“You’re welcome,” Thor beamed at Clint.

“Are you okay, buddy?” asked Bruce softly, his hand still on Thor’s shoulder. 

“Not really,” Thor replied with pure, unsullied honesty in his tone, and everyone shifted to listen. “I’m still thinking about, well —” 

Then, as one, they all went combat-ready. Hands on weapons, shifting stances in response to the enormous crash from outside. 

Steve didn’t have a weapon. So he picked up his coffee mug, took a nervous sip, and watched. 

He had recognized the sound right away, even if the others hadn’t.  The suit had bulls-eyed into the center of the street outside. Metal on concrete. Impact sharp and sudden enough to burst the cement into dust, dust, dust swirling through the air, like a couple of thousand dandelion puffs had all just been wished on all at once. 

And when the dust began to settled, a lonely figure emerged from the gray cloud. He pulled his helmet from his head and scrutinized them carefully, one by one, like he was inspecting a line of enemy combatants, or some long-forgotten ghosts, or some bugs in a container. Eyes dark, and face damaged. Gruesomely so.

Finally he spoke.

“...Half the lifeforms in the universe wiped out in an instant, and  _ all five _ of you dumb motherfuckers survived?”

Steve stared at him.

Natasha lifted her chin and smirked. Slightly. Aggressively. Hopefully. 

Clint shrugged, then sniffed, then smirked also.

Thor looked around, scrutinizing the group as he counted each person in turn, frowned, and mouthed  _ five? _

And Bruce smiled warmly and said, in perfect unison with Tony: “Must be a Tuesday.”

 

 

*** 

 

(Part 1/2; Part Two quite possibly coming soon).


	2. Chapter 2

 

“But it’s a Monday,” Thor objected, confused.

“Just an expression,” Natasha clarified for him.

The tether to that other time was complete. All six of the originals. They were back. The brute fact of Tony Stark being there, in the flesh, right there after all the carefully-staged mental conversations Steve had run through in advance, threw Steve completely off-guard, and he went silent. Sat back and just watched events unfold, like the useless spectator he was.

Tony Stark wasn't one to let a good silence sit, though. He strode inside the cafe, l ooked all of them hard in the eyes. Looked like he was straight-up going to murder a few of them, actually. His eyes settled on Steve.

There was an awkward silence.

“Captain,” he acknowledged at last. Clearly, it was a deliberate choice: not  _ Cap _ , not  _ Steve _ or  _ Rogers _ or  _ you backstabbing bastard _ . Steve looked Tony in the face, emotionless. Tony held his gaze for ages; his eyes were sharp; his jaw was locked. “Long time, no see,” he finally added.

“Haha, I think you mean long time no  _ Steeeve _ —”

“Clint, I swear to god,” said Natasha, her voice raised and her palm on her forehead. 

“Ha! Ha ha!” boomed Thor cheerfully. “Good one, Barton!”

"Did you get Doctor Strange back?” Bruce asked Tony, inviting himself into Tony's personal space and clapping a hand on his back. "Good to see you again, by the way."

“Yeah, I got him back. And lost him again. God, I am _ starving _ ,” said Tony, pulling away from Bruce's touch and yanking chair over to the table. He collapsed into it. Then he began laying waste to the nearest cupcake. It had been _days_ and days since he'd eaten anything. As soon as the first cupcake was gone, he got to work on a second, and then a third. Natasha poured coffee into the largest to-go cup she could find and passed it to Tony.

He made a sour face upon tasting it.

“Well, this sucks."

"So, is this cupcake shop our new HQ, or can we maybe head back to the Tower now that Tony's back?" asked Clint.  "Or can we maybe go somewhere less… desecrated by recent events, at least?”

Out of nowhere, Thor gasped.

“What’s wrong, good buddy?” asked Bruce, instantly concerned.

“Asgard,” Thor muttered, dabbing at his eyes and giving them all an incredibly fake smile. “It just, that word reminded me. Asgard was also _desecrated_ , just like this. Ragnarok happened. Only days ago. FYI. And now, New York… and no doubt Arizona, also… Oh, gods. Everywhere that was home to me is now just…” He knuckled his forehead. "Even my brother, Loki..."

Then he heaved a long, heartfelt _OH MY_   _ GODDDD!!  _ of despair at the ceiling.

No one seemed to know what to say -- 

No one except Bruce.

“Okay, Thor, we get it, you lost everything and it’s horrible. But can you please not be so depressing in front of the other guys,” said Bruce, who was rubbing Thor’s back non-stop. “You’re setting a bad example. They’re all gonna lose it if you can’t hold it together.”

Thor answered with a choked, panicked sob.

“You want to go somewhere and cry it out for a while?”

“ _ Yes _ ,” moaned Thor, big pearly tears already sliding down his shaking chin, into his beard.

Bruce rubbed his back more, and said, “Look, guys, I think I’d better get him back to Midtown to crash. He’s been in denial for the last several days, and life was pretty bad for him even before this Thanos thing happened. Password and Tower Clearance still the same? Tony?”

“Hm? Oh, uh, yeah. I mean, theoretically, yeah.” Tony fought a sudden urge to slap Bruce, and Thor, and everyone. Rage swelled so big inside him, he had nearly spit cupcake into Bruce's face.  _ This Thanos thing _ . Like it was anywhere near on par with the Ultron thing, or the Loki thing. Like Bruce had even  _ lost  _ anybody important to him-- 

“We’ll call you if we can’t get in,” said Bruce, patting Tony on his iron-shod shoulder once more.

Tony flicked his wrist at Bruce. Not polite. It didn’t matter. Rage was coursing through his battered body. How dare Bruce…how dare any of them act so casually about….

His rage was sucked out of him at the sight of cupcake crumbs on his plate and the disheveled coffee cup in his iron-plated hand. Suddenly, he felt sick. Really sick.  Peter was  _ gone _ , and Tony was sitting here eating  _ cupcakes… _ ?  Vomit burned in the back of his throat, but he was too catatonic to allow it to rise. Peter was gone. Peter was  _ gone _ . What about the others? Pepper? Rhodey? Happy? 

Tony swallowed down his acrid nausea and looked at Natasha for answers. 

“Where’s Vision?”

She shook her head.

“Dammit,” he muttered, kicking at the table leg in his frustration. “DAMN it. Wanda?”

“No,” she said. 

“God  _ damn _ it,” he said, then launched into a series of sentences comprised more or less out of just the words  _ shit _ ,  _ fuck _ , and  _ motherfucking goddamnit.  _

“I take it you had a plan?” asked Nat when there was a slight break in the flow of curse words.

“ _ Had _ being the operative term,” said Stark. “God. Fuck. Now I have no idea.” 

“You’ll think of something!” said Clint brightly, out of nowhere.

“Ha!” scoffed Stark, sounding like he was about to throw up. But he wasn’t done yet. His eyes grew flinty and his expression hardened.  “Happy?” he asked Natasha.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Fury?”

She swallowed hard.“No.”

“Rhodey?”

“Yes.”

“...Pepper?”

There was a too-long pause. She reached over and took one of Tony’s metal hands in hers. “Unknown at this time,” she said as gently and softly as she could. “I’ve been asking every--”

“ _ Fuck _ ,” sighed Tony, drawing his hand back and turning so they couldn’t see his face. “ _ Fuck _ .”

“I’m sorry, Tony.”

“... _ fuck. _ ”

And then he was silent, too.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

 

...Clearly, Barnes was dead. Otherwise Steve wouldn’t  _ be  _ here. Wouldn’t have time for their precious Avengers team. Too busy reliving the glory days, with his Ol’ Bucky Ol’ Pal.

And probably Sam Wilson, Steve Roger’s shadow, was dead, too. Which caused a  _ ping _ of a problem in Tony’s brain as he began to list the people who weren’t present, but really should be. Wanda. Rhodey. Vision.

Tony tried to feel something about the names, as he thought through them. 

...Wasn’t happening.

The others started talking, but Tony was shifting down several gears all at once. His injuries were catching up to him, and the spaceflight with Nebula had left him jittery as fuck. No way, no motherfucking way he was going to think about the Pepper problem right now. Not in front of these assholes.

He depowered the nanotech suit, or what was left of it, and let the others discuss getting him into medical treatment, starting with hailing a nearby cab. He heard what they were saying, but he couldn’t process any of it. Not to the point where it aroused any desire to actually respond to any of them. Ever.

_ I dunno, Nat. Should you be allowed to drive?  _

_ I still have my NYC taxi driver’s license.  _

_ That’s only for black car and limousine service. _

_ Yeah, and didn’t you take a major blow to the head in Wakanda? _

_ Friends don’t let other friends drive concussed, Nat.  _

_ I’m not that concussed. _

_...You’re my best friend. I’m not letting you drive. _

Wait… Steve and Natasha were best friends? When did  _ that _ even happen? No, wait, that must have been Clint’s voice.

Why had it sounded like -- like Roger’s voice?

“...Earth to Tony. Hello, Tony? Are you coming?”

“Fine,” he grunted, pushing himself away from the table, mask of utter nonchalance settling over him, as usual. “Just bring the coffee and cupcakes. And whiskey. Lead the way.”

Updated on the way to the pier. What they were all doing, thinking, planning. How Thanos had just stormed in…

Outside the cab window, New York was limping on. Tony distracted himself by watching looters having their way with all the retail they wanted, all through Midtown, including…no, not including Stark Tower. That would be crazy. No one could get in there. 

His fingers were contorting.  _ Call Happy’s family. Call Pep. Call Rhodey _ . Get out of the company of these three evil people who had all  _ abandoned  _ him right before their hour of need. Slap someone. Hurt someone like how he, Tony, had been hurt. Why the  _ fuck  _ was he stuck in a cab with motherfucking Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Captain Amer--

_ Snap out of it, asshole. Stop being a hater. Be the bigger person.  _

His fingers traced thought after broken thought along the cab ride until he found himself sitting on a pier overlooking the Hudson, with Natasha and Clint sitting on either side of him, and Steve standing a little ways off. They were all watching the river. It was quiet. A few animals here and there, but no humans anywhere in sight. Ducks bobbed around on the surface of the water, and pelicans swooped in to eat fish that had been dusted out of existence. like they had no idea. 

“Weren’t we going to the Tower?” asked Tony, when he realized he’d been silently staring at the sun for four or five minutes straight.

“You asked me to pull over so you could throw up,” said Natasha coolly, but not unkindly.

“Right there,” Clint said, pointing at a pile of pastel goo about twenty feet away.

Tony cradled his forehead in his hand. Suddenly he realized he was wearing Clint’s gray jacket. The favorite one, with the black arrow on it. Somebody must have put it on him while he was lost in a haze. There were flecks of frosting-vomit on it. “Uhh. Sorry. Wow, my head is spinning.”

“To be fair, you’ve been through your share of crap the last couple of days, Tones.”

That was Natasha speaking, again, but she was using Rhodey’s nickname for him. It made Tony sour, and sick, but it was  _ so  _ comforting. A comfort that was also a subtle reminder:  _ there are still a few people who here need you, care about you… _

Was that what she was saying? He used to be able to read her. Well, or he used to be able to believe he knew how to read her. 

He kind of chuckled, hoarsely, and Clint crept over until he was sitting on the pier, beside Tony, his hand resting on Tony’s back. It felt good. 

“It’s not your fault, Tony,” said Natasha softly, forgivingly, cajolingly, crouched on his other side. “No one blames you. In fact, you’re the only person here who really saw this coming, and you did everything you could to warn the rest of us.”

“Not everything,” he said, with a very quick, almost frightened glance at Steve, who was looking away again, at the horizon. 

“More than the rest of us combined,” she argued, causing Tony’s blood pressure to rise.

“It was  _ my _ fault we failed. You guys know that.”

“That’s not accurate,” she argued back through gritted teeth. 

“But it’s what we’re going with!” interrupted Clint breezily and hurriedly, shocking everybody.  _ Can’t do this here _ .  _ Not the time.  _ “Come one, let’s start brainstorming.”

An aggressive, maybe even malevolent silence arose from the Captain-Rogers-occupied portion of the pier, which was not where Clint’s comment had been directed.

“Excuse me,  _ brainstorming _ ?”

“You’ll think of something, Tony. And if you don’t, we will.”

“...We will?” asked Natasha doubtfully.

“Why not?” shrugged Clint. “It’s not like we have anything better to do.”

“That’s true for everyone except  _ you _ ,” she said. “You’ve still got your family, Barton.”

At this, Tony’s head shot up. He was staring at Clint, terrified concern laced through his expression.

“Everyone made it,” said Clint swiftly, in response to the unasked question. 

“ _ Wow _ ,” sighed Tony immediately. “No kidding. Thank god. Wow,  _ everyone _ ?” There was audible envy in his voice.

“Yup,” said Clint. “One kid, and all three wives. No, wait. Other way around.”

“Very atypical Barton luck,” remarked Nat, finally taking a seat on the pier, her arms wrapping around one leg, the other swinging freely above the water. “Five for five. Six for six, counting the cat.”

Tony shook his head in disbelief. “What are you even _ doing _ here, Barton? You’ve got to go home. Don’t be a fool. Just go home and—“

“Yeah, Nat and Steve’s been saying that, too,” said Clint, scratching at the back of his neck, a bit sheepishly. “Believe me, I see your guys’ point. I could. But I won’t. My mind’s already made up.”

Tony stared at him in abject astonishment. He pressed his lips together, then looked away, shaking his head in disbelief. “You are a hero, Barton.”

“Ha! Yeah. We all are,” he said back. “I know it’s kind of a corny word. But I keep thinking about it. Kinda dumb, but… well… I would love to be tucked away at home with Laura and the kids for the rest of my life, except that wouldn’t be fair. We need to get the family back together. Not the Barton family, but the other one. And besides…” he added, with a fleeting glance at the back of Natasha’s head, “We’ve lost so many good heroes already. I just can’t stand to lose any more.”

Tony stared at his hands. 

Who would have thought, after all these years, it would be  _ Hawkeye _ who was the glue holding them together? 

Crazy stuff.

“Um… well…we went after Doctor Strange,” he said suddenly, to the question no one had asked but they presumably all wanted answered. “Caught up to him, but…”

“He died?” prompted Clint, off of Tony’s long silence.

“No. Well — later, yeah. But… you’ve all seen  _ Alien _ , right?”

“Does that have anything to do with this?” demanded Natasha, a small trace of impatience in her tone.

He didn’t answer right away. 

Something was radically different, inside, Tony reflected soberly. His sarcasm was gone, had been ever since the snap. And he wasn’t thinking out loud, not how he always had before. Slowly he realized that he was actually trying to tell them the full story, the actual truth. This was, like… a first. 

He shot a glance at Rogers, who was staring at the water. Thoughtfully keeping his distance. Or was he drifting away? Like he didn’t even…  

Tony cleared his throat and raised his voice, speaking to all three of them. “You guys. All my — most of my life, I’ve been alone. I’m used to operating as a lone wolf, and I didn’t see the full extent of the downsides to that approach until…”

Tony was mumbling, but at the very least he was sharing. That  _ had _ to be a start in repairing relations, right? The setting was right. The timing was decent (terrible, but decent). And the cast of people who needed to perform in this long, fraught, mawkish melodrama was... present. 

“I’m…” 

_ Sorry _ .

They all looked at him, waiting for the rest of the sentence.

_ Say the damn word _ , Tony, his mind shouted at him, but something stronger surged up and stopped him. He really wasn’t there yet. Not today, of all days.

“It’s okay, Tony.” Steve’s somber voice. Not angry or unkind, but also entirely unwelcome. “You made the call you felt most prepared to make.”

“Yeah,” Tony replied shortly, but his voice broke on the single syllable, and his teeth clenched. He was shaking with anger. He looked down, involuntarily, then made himself look back up, look Steve in the eye. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. So we have a good team. I know we’ve had all sorts of wild and crazy ups and downs, you guys, but I just want to say that I trust each and every one of you to have my back, and I hope you know you can trust me with yours. Okay? That’s all I wanted to say.”

Natasha smiled. “Good speech.”

“Yeah, good speech, and ditto,” said Clint earnestly, clapping him on the back. “Can we please go back to the Tower, now? It’s freezing out here.”

“You big wimp.”

“Says the guy covered in pale pink frosting.”

“It’s a look.”

“Yeah, but not a good one.”

Against his will, Tony smiled, and Clint grinned back.

Maybe, just maybe, they  _ were _ gonna be okay...


End file.
